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September 2008

23 September 2008

So I had my wallet with my phone stolen last Friday and I lost a LOT of numbers. (if you're reading this and you have mine, call me so I can recapture yours please).

Coincidentally, my friend is throwing an ET party this weekend..theme: "Phone Home" It's gonna be a blast. I went looking online for an ET doll to put in his front yard in my bike basket, but came across this funny Youtube...thought I'd share..

and then this onewhich is a bit long but made me giggle a LOT...:

By the way, I did not steal his stereo and Yoda, I WANT MY RECORDS BACK!XXKHT

22 September 2008

1
: a servile dependent, follower, or underling
2
: one highly favored :idol3
: a subordinate or petty official

It's sickening. This country is clearly doped up on Thorazine. I received this email today that puts things in perspective. I have not checked the accuracy of the facts, but many of them are well known. If anyone reading this can rebut any part of the following, I promise to print the corrections.

"I'm a little confused. Let me see if I have this straight.....

If you grow up in Hawaii, raised by your grandparents, you're 'exotic, different.'Grow up in Alaska eating mooseburgers, a quintessential American story.

If your name is Barack you're a radical, unpatriotic Muslim. Name your kids Willow, Trig and Track, you're a maverick.

Graduate from Harvard law School you are unstable. Attend 5 different small colleges before graduating, you're well grounded.

If you spend 3 years as a brilliant community organizer, become the first black President of the Harvard Law Review, create a voter registration drive that registers 150,000 new voters, spend 2 years as a Constitutional Law professor, spend 8 years as a State Senator representing a district with over 750,000 people, become chairman of the state Senate's Health and Human Services committee, spend 4 years in the United States Senate representing a state of 13 million people while sponsoring 131 bills and serving on the Foreign Affairs, Environment and Public Works and Veteran's Affairs committees, you don't have any real leadership experience.

If your total resume is: local weather girl, 4 years on the city council and 6 years as the mayor of a town with less than 7,000 people, 20 months as the governor of a state with only 650,000 people, then you're qualified to become the country's second highest ranking executive.

If you have been married to the same woman for 19 years while raising 2 beautiful daughters, all within Protestant churches, you're not a real Christian. If you cheated on your first wife with a rich heiress, and left your disfigured wife and married the heiress the next month, you're a Christian.

If you teach responsible, age appropriate sex education, including the proper use of birth control, you are eroding the fiber of society. If, while governor, you staunchly advocate abstinence only, with no other option in sex education in your state's school system while your unwed teen daughter ends up pregnant, you're very responsible.

If your wife is a Harvard graduate lawyer who gave up a position in a prestigious law firm to work for the betterment of her inner city community, then gave that up to raise a family, your family's values don't represent America's.

If your husband is nicknamed 'First Dude', with at least one DWI conviction and no college education, who didn't register to vote until age 25 and once was a member of a group that advocated the secession of Alaska from the USA, your family is extremely admirable.

OK, much clearer now." (source unavailable)

This campaign is over the top. Ever since 9/11 the GOP has been getting away with murder - literally and figuratively.

19 September 2008

I got to be on the radio today on a local station 105.9 The Radiator to talk some more about the ART HOP debacle. It was fun. Did you know that today is "National Talk Like A Pirate Day?"

I thought it might have something to do with The Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster (and as it happens, I was right!) but no one at the station had heard of it, so I got to break that story on the air. Score one for the noodley team!

07 September 2008

Perhaps my fifteen minutes of fame has yet to arrive. Or perhaps, like a cat has nine lives, I'm destined to experience repeated quarter hours over the course of my life and career. This time my fame comes from controversy (who's surprised?).

This weekend, Burlington held its annual ART HOP and through a series of unfortunate (or perhaps fortunate?) events, I found myself at the center of an old debate: What is art? Is it decoration? And when a business agrees to host an art show, do they have final editorial license (or in my case ultimate veto?)

This was my first (and likely last ART HOP) and I signed up to exhibit two pieces - one for the outdoor juried show, and one for the indoor juried show. Through a clerical error, ART HOP assigned me an additional exhibition space to hang a personal show.

I found this out late last week when they phoned to tell me the time and place to drop off my artwork.

"Um, Mr. Art Organizer...I didn't sign up for a show."

"You didn't? Oh."

"Does this mean my name is printed in the program as showing somewhere?"

"Yes, but we could put up a sign that says you're not showing if you like."

"I don't think so. I'll have something for you as soon as possible."

So I put together a show of 24 postcard sized images of mostly bucolic postcardy stuff. The ferry returning for the evening on Lake Champlain. Scottish Highland cows lined up and staring into my lens. Macros of flowers etc. All benignly beautiful and uncontroversial except for the few images of dolls and mannequins I slipped in for my own good pleasure.

Three of the images were of a snow covered doll.

A day after I hung the show, and two days before the public exhibition officially began, I received a phone call from the organizers.

"Kimberley, I'm afraid I have some bad news....The business owner has asked that you take down your show."

"WHAT?! WHY?"

"She said that she didn't appreciate that you hung pictures of 'dead baby dolls' in her space."

"Baby dolls can't die because they were never alive."

"Well, she doesn't want them there."

"Ok."

He offered to let me move the show to SEABA headquarters. The problem was (other than the obvious) that I didn't really have time to move the show and anyway WHY SHOULD I HAVE TO?

So I thought about it and ranted about it some and thought about it some more. I decided to take the show down and wear it on the main day of the festival. I made a poster with an enlargement of the offending image that said, "Does This Photo Offend YOU?"

I also made fifty copies of the image with that slogan and my contact info that I gave out to people at the ART HOP and friends who wanted to support my cause.

The two local papers interviewed me. The 7Days blogged about it at BLURT (their staff blog) and the Burlington Free Press published it in this Sunday's paper (today).

For the record, I did not want to make this a pissing contest between me and SEABA or the business owner but the papers and their readership are sure trying to make it into that.

All I want is for this to stimulate dialog about how to avoid this type of situation in future. If I'd just sat still and done nothing about it - the business owner would have had the advertising she'd signed up for, the traffic funneled to her site and I would have had my name in the program with a blank space where my art should be simply because the host had a reaction to my work (isn't art supposed to illicit a response? Any response is good, right?).

People are pretty pissed that I didn't allow the situation to be swept under the rug, but I'm sticking to my guns (again, who's surprised?). I feel I represent all artists and that the business owner represents all business owners.

The question is, who has editorial control to decide what is and what is not appropriate for showing at businesses? What is art? Are these art shows, craft fairs or is this plain old fashioned business as usual?

Quixotically,XXKHT

”Do what you feel in your heart to be right, for you'll be criticized anyway .” -- Eleanor Roosevelt